Newsfeed: (Montreal)28th February 2009 Stadium Art Movement appeared at Off the Hook Gallery and Boutique, 1021a Ste-Catherine Street West.

Please visit this website for more information:offthehook.caWatch for Johnny Kim's exclusive interview with the Montreal founder of the Stadium Art Movement

-------------------------------------------------------------------------Thanks to all those who supported the Stadium Art Movement with the purchase of the 2008 Calendar. A 2009 version was unveiled at EXPOZINE in Montreal on the 27th of November 2008. It is available at Drawn & Quarterly, Petits Pains Show and Kensington Market Toronto. Get ready for our new website launch 2009, stadiumartmovement.com

important appendix update at bottomclick the italics to move to the links

Availability:Drawn & Quarterly- Bernard Street in the mile End Montreal 2009 Calendar now on sale.Also visit the craft fair Petits-Pains Show, to be held 5035 rue St-Dominque (corner of St-Joseph and St Laurent) 13th and 14th of December.To order posters, postcards, t-shirts and calendars online, email newcolenall@yahoo.co.uk (this facility will be expanded into our 2009 stadiumartmovement.com website)

This is an art form that first came to note in the late seventies and early eighties in Britain and South America, much of it produced by failed draughtsmen and Architecture School drop-outs.Early links with graffiti and football hooliganism have been unverified, yet it is certain Stadium Art came about at the same time modern mainstream media turned their attention upon the social identities of youth sub-cultures at the beginning of the Thatcher era.Popularized by the writer Simon Inglisin his seminal work Football Grounds of Great Britain, (no longer in print, our copy is now worth $300+!) the Art World has since witnessed a new emergence in the genre emanating from Centre SudMontreal, Quebec."Acclaim" has been swift.Within the contexts of varying degrees of humour, according to several critics, samples coming out of Montreal via The Trunk Collective subvert the everyday status quo of the Old School, most of which sits in association with the early style of Archibald Leitch.

"The stadium has carried the day against the art Museum"-- Hannes Meyer- a Swiss teacher at the Bauhaus 1927-30

This late wave of New Montreal stadium art is characterized by its disregard for logical mechanics and emphasis on questioning the issue of popular public space (land? sea? air?) versus the personal and private. Here we see free-hand block work (a graffiti term) let loose without a ruler, yet humble in its regard for the classical founders of urban design. Homages to Beaux Art, The Chicago School and the City Beautiful movement pop up inside aerials that intend to romanticize the coziness and congestion found in the nooks and crannies that connect the sub-worlds inside densely populated cities. The notion that a vast tract of the landscape should be set aside for a twice weekly event, and then left hollow in the meantime, is a matter that has even brought some of the Theologians in on the question.It seems to some, that these are not just symbols, but holy places. As Simon Inglisprobably meant to say in his landmark book on stadiums (Sightlines)-what we are seeing in Montreal amongst some of the more daring artists working in the genre is a "return to the garden, the redrawing of the boundaries of the jungle and the relinquishing of edento the original sin; the laws of right and wrong played out by the gods and winds while we watch innocently, entombed by the city, in the womb of our aspirational mothers, to be born, andborn again... that is the goal"Jonathan Himsworth, in Montreal for the burgeoning global Stadium ArtMovementetc.

[Note, some of the images seen here are not available to the public. The image with the trunk is now held by Cirque du Soleil a gift commemorating their assistance with the Art Movement through the involvement of the Trunk Collective]

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My name is Jonathan. You will not find me on f*cebook. I was born in Montreal but grew up in Bermuda, UK, Phoenix and Vancouver. Foremost an illustrator/tale-teller/social gymnastics commentator, I write about Gingham and Stadiums, Street Art and Good News. All attempts are made to credit where it is due and any pics that cause your tender eyes a problem can be sorted with emails to the contacts you see. This is all for general interest, not indignation. However, I have tried to remain as factual as possible so please notify me for any corrections you see fit.